Staying Straight
by EzraTheBlue
Summary: Three years out of jail and on parole, an ex-gang punk-turned-courier meets an eccentric young man thirty days out of a state asylum. They form an unusual bond, which may be the only thing that keeps both of them on the right path. AU- Modern Urban Setting.
1. Jo

**Staying Straight**

**Notes: **Happy 5/8 day, everyone! I'm celebrating in style! Just off the bat, this is a modern urban AU (inspired, of all things, by my daily commute to work through the city.) Names have been changed, but characters should be pretty quickly recognizable. With a few exceptions, the first letter of the new names will match. The ones who don't, I hopefully have made them obvious enough.

Second, this is going to be a multi-chapter story, but unlike my other stories, there will be no regular update schedule. It's ready when it's ready.

Third, I promise this story will be a lot less weird than anything else I've written.

Last, special thanks to RodiSquall for reading over the chapters before I post them! I touched it last, but she helped!

**Disclaimer:** The original characters are not mine, and I do not profit. This story is being cross-posted on FFN and AO3.

* * *

**1: Jo**

Jo opened his eyes to the roar of a guitar riff from somewhere under his futon and the drumming of rain against the window in tempo with his racing heart. He killed the alarm with a swipe of his finger, and glared out the window, dismayed, at the wet morning waiting for him. Chance Harbor wasn't normally this damp this early in spring, but he couldn't even tell the sun was up. The dull windows of the apartment high-rise across the road, and even the mirrored skyscrapers visible over it, reflected only drowsy blue-gray and the crumbling brick of his building's facade. Miserable, but it wasn't just the gloom of the morning souring his mood. He slid one hand down over his face, and got it.

"Back in the slammer again las' night. Always when it rains." He could brood about his nightmares, but it would be pointless. It didn't matter what happened last night. He still had to get up, put pants on, and face the day.

Jo didn't dream of jail every night. He didn't dream very much, though, and he only mostly remembered the ones about being locked up.

Maybe "jail" wasn't accurate in terms of his vernacular. Yana corrected him whenever he said he'd been in jail for four years, since he'd spent three of them in juvenile hall. It was still four years of his life he didn't spend on the street, which was nice compared to how it had been before his arrest. Before that, he'd been mostly by himself, or under Benny's wing when Benny needed a hand and never when Jo did. Benny- yeah, Jo could probably blame Benny for at least some of it. Benny was a bottle-blonde sonofabitch who thinned his eyebrows like some Shangri-La _yakuza- _he thought he looked cool, but Jo thought he looked like a cancer patient- and he tried to act like one too. Jo couldn't quite remember how he'd fallen in with Benny, only that he was there when he wandered into this particular Little Shangri-La and Jo had no particularly good reason to push him away. If Benny cared, there would be a roof over his head and a hot meal in front of him, and nobody trying to mug him for whatever he might have had. When Jo was on his own, he was sleeping in shelters when there was room and getting food in whatever way he could.

It wasn't like he was ashamed or anything. He had been doing what he had to do to keep himself alive. He picked pockets, swiped wallets, he'd put a knife to a few throats on nights when he couldn't count back to the last day he'd eaten and his stomach was starting to growl like the motor on a burnt-out Pinto. He got as good as he gave, since there were guys bigger than him, stronger than him, and hungrier than him. It was one of the reasons he got so good at fighting back, which was probably the only reason Benny wanted him around at all. That, in turn, was how he got arrested.

"Just a quick hotel job," Benny'd said. "The security's shit, we'll be in and out in two minutes," Benny'd said. "If shit goes down, I want you around to be my security, but it won't come to that, you just gotta stand around," Benny'd said. Jo had no idea how his fifteen-year-old self couldn't figure out just how full of shit Benny was. He and some of Benny's other cronies had been keeping watch on the pier outside of the Waterfront Temple Suites while Benny and a few others went in to bust the safe. Jo had figured it out later, but Benny was the kind of guy who had big ideas and not nearly enough brain power to think them through, so while he'd figured on only having to deal with one overnight receptionist to get to the safe, and he'd figured he wouldn't be able to move the safe, he hadn't exactly calculated how to open the safe. Jo heard the explosion. Hell, _Philadelphia_ probably heard the explosion. Whatever Benny had used wasn't the right stuff, or it wasn't enough; it was just enough to kill everyone in a ten foot radius (which didn't include Benny, since Benny was stupid, but he wasn't_ that_ stupid) but the safe was still there, as thick and sturdy as the day it'd been bought, as were the fire detectors in the next room. Ten thousand alarms went off, and the cops descended from around the block onto Jo and the five other dudes who'd been keeping watch. Jo managed to hold off the cops while trying to figure out how to get into the crumbling lobby; he could still hear Benny screaming from under the rubble, and Benny might have been an idiot and not especially reliable, but he'd fed Jo more than enough times to deserve a drag out of the mess he'd made. He wasn't going to run away, it never even crossed his mind. He just had to get the cops out of his hair. He was- still was- whipcord strong and bullwhip quick, so dodging taser wires and punching the lights out on a few donut-eaters wasn't a problem for him. The problem was the next three cars full, then the vans of men in black armor.

Jo had heard of the Crows before his arrest. He wasn't deaf, and Benny never tried to be quiet about it. He knew that every other guy who'd been with him that night had a crow's wing tattooed on their arm, chest, or shoulder, Benny on his left temple in line with where his eyebrows would be if the ugly fucker didn't shave them off. So when the cop interrogator asked how long he'd been a member of the Crows, Jo had laughed.

"You see wings anywhere on me? Fuck, I'm not in his gang." Benny had asked Jo to join formally, of course, but Jo couldn't stand the thought of being tied down like that. He didn't know the next time he'd want to change cities, and he didn't want to have to worry about any "blood in, blood out" contracts. The interrogator didn't believe him, and he remembered sitting in that tiny room for a very long time by himself. When he'd been little, before _it_ had happened, Jack would sometimes tell him to "go sit and think about what you did" in a corner, because of course it was Jack's job to punish him when Mom was too drunk to beat him. He was pretty sure that was what they were doing now, letting him think about what he did because he was _such_ a naughty little bastard, but he'd heard some of their conversation under the door or through their obvious one-way mirror as clear as if they were talking over his head.

"I'm not finding any records on him. You think he's lying about his age?"

"Throw a wider net; you heard him, he doesn't remember what state he came from. He doesn't look more than fifteen, anyway."

He'd been right on the line, so he figured. The interrogator came back in and told him that "Benny flipped on you." He also brought in a lady from Child Services and a public defender in a cheap suit. Once they decided he was too young to represent himself, they started to treat him like he couldn't tie his own shoes, and the conversation was between the three _adults_. Sure, Jo had been taking care of himself for six years, but the second the cops got involved, he was nothing but a helpless infant. Jo could only sit there and nod with the Child Services rep digging way-too-long acrylics into his shoulder and whispering, "You don't have to answer that, sweetie" down to him whenever the interrogator tried to ask him something or say anything to him. They agreed that if Jo would write a deposition on the gangs, right down to names and addresses- which would keep him from having to testify against Benny directly and risking retaliation, but would still be useful in the cops' investigation- and give a full confession, he'd be able to go to juvy instead of adult jail for most of his sentence.

And hell, it wasn't like he could get out of it. He still remembered the look the judge gave him a few weeks later at sentencing, the way-too-bright, windowless room that smelled of cheap cologne and angry sweat, and the heavy cuffs around his wrists and ankles.

"Joel Sha, for theft, loitering, assault, and engaging in organized criminal activity, I sentence you to a total of five years of imprisonment." The judge sneered down at him around his too-wide, pockmarked nose, and in some of the stupid old crime movies he and Jack would watch, the judges would follow the sentencing with something like "May God have mercy on your soul." This judge didn't have to, maybe didn't want to say a line like that, or maybe it was against regulation, but Jo could feel that condemnation from just his face. God didn't have mercy on guys like him, that was what they were always trying to say, but people like that were never straightforward with it. They gave you their side and let you fill in yours. It pissed Jo off. It made him not really want mercy at all.

Juvy was actually kind of okay. It was better than being on the street- roof over his head, food on sanitized white plastic tables in a sanitized gray dining hall, and every night, there were nine different desserts he could choose from. Jo had never figured there were nine desserts to be had, maybe never thought about it- snacks weren't really a thing when there was nobody to buy them for you- but here, there were little squares of carrot cake, German chocolate cake, and vanilla cake, cups of vanilla, chocolate, or rice pudding, or chocolate eclairs, little fruit tarts, and chocolate chip cookies. It was the same nine every night, but if Jo was ever in the mood for sweets, he had his pick. It wasn't all roses and sunshine- it was still prison. He couldn't leave, he had a laundry list of things he could and couldn't do, and that buzzer that marked when to go and wherever they wanted him to go rubbed him raw. It was just nicer than the way he'd lived since he was eight and on his own. It was almost like those boarding schools in the movies, just with bars on the windows, barbed wire on the fences, and there weren't actually classes scheduled. Jo still decided to get his GED, because it wasn't like he had anything better to do. He wasn't much for reading, but he was okay with numbers, and he signed up for classes that could get him up to speed. It was something to do, and it might be good to have after he got out. Plus, his public defender and the Child Services lady had both said that evidence of good behavior could get him out faster, and getting a GED sounded like something a "good" kid would do in juvy.

It seemed there were only "good" kids in there with them, according to the adults he heard muttering about them. He didn't make friends, not solid ones anyway, because he just didn't get along with dudes all that well. He smiled enough to have guys to talk to in the yard, guys who taught him poker with smuggled-in decks, guys who stopped wanting to play poker with him after getting their asses handed to them by Jo's uncanny luck, and even a few guys who would help him study for tests. He didn't remember their names when they stopped talking to him, or when they got released. Most of the guys got released pretty quickly, and the ones who didn't just went away. Jo thought about the ones who went away sometimes- not the ones who aged out, but the ones who freaked out, who attacked another kid or an officer. One time, a guy tried to cut his own throat with a plastic knife at dinner and splattered his blood onto the sanitized white table and onto the sanitized charcoal linoleum, but only made a mess of himself and not in the way he wanted. Jo hadn't been there, he'd only heard, but he smelled the sanitizing solution a lot stronger for the next few days and the yard poker games were a little smaller until the next bus arrived. Whenever someone went away, no matter what the reason, Jo could hear someone or other saying, "He was a good kid."

He wondered if they said that about him when he turned eighteen and they moved him to the Our Lady of Perpetual Peace Bayside Correctional Facility. He didn't want to be a good kid, or even a good adult. He just wanted to go back to being him.

Jail was a lot like juvy, really, just bigger, and with bigger guys and more of them. He still had a bed to sleep in and three squares a day, plus those same nine desserts, every single night. Maybe if you were there a couple more years, a guy could get sick of them, and the monthly meal rotation to boot, but Jo didn't care for sweets and as long as it was cooked through, he'd eat whatever was splashed onto his tray with a grateful smile. They didn't make him cut his hair, which Jo had expected from the TV shows he'd seen, but he was grateful, since he'd been growing it since before he was arrested and he liked how it looked long. (Maybe he was vain, but it sort of had this burgundy sheen to it that looked like red wine in the sunlight. He liked that.) He didn't have a cellmate, since he'd been jailed for gang activity, but he wasn't put in solitary confinement either. He knew there were other guys from gangs around- he knew there were other Crows around, but the known Crows were kept in solitary, and the Crows who weren't known as members either didn't recognize him or did and kept their mouths shut because solitary is the closest thing to a literal hell Jo could think of. But there weren't just Crows. Operating out of Little Shangri-La alone- Jo's preferred stamping ground, and his only stamping ground in this city- Jo knew of the Centipedes, the Bulls, the Sharks, and the Holy Men, and he was sure all four had at least some representation. However, they were the same as the Crows: if they knew he'd been involved with Benny, they didn't say anything because then it would come out that they were involved with Benny at some angle. And looking back, maybe Jo was a little more involved with the gangs than he'd figured on before his arrest.

Jo remembered writing his deposition- or rather, "dictating" it (the Child Services lady's words, not his) because writing and typing weren't really his strong suits- and surprised himself with how much he knew about how the gangs operated just from listening to Benny jabber. "We don't do turf wars, it's kind of split on certain blocks, except field trips. If we meet outside of our ward, we either stay out of each other's way or team up." The Crows would willingly work with the Bulls or the Sharks- the Bulls would work with anyone, though the Sharks were a little more picky. The Sharks and Cents didn't work together, and the Crows would only work with the Cents if the job was really worth it, since Benny hated how the Cents worked. ("I hear their initiation is done on ladies- only on ladies. Those sick fucks, they fucking _require_ a boy to take a lady and- Jesus, Jo, don't fuck with the Cents. They do sick shit like that for fun. I don't know what they do to little boys.") The Holy Men were a different story- they didn't do team-ups, and they were the only one of the five who would go out of their way to attack other gangs. They were smaller and worked quietly, almost under the radar, but if they thought someone was getting too close to finding out what they were actually doing, that someone would vanish, and while Benny wasn't afraid to kill people, he never went out of his way to do it. The Holy Men didn't do turf wars, per se, but if they were planning something in a certain area and one of the other gangs started some activity there, there would be a brawl, and the Holy Men were tough customers in a rumble. Benny was smart enough to stick to his streets, and if he even heard a whisper that the Holy Men were working on a block, he'd tell all of his guys to steer clear. Even that couldn't keep them at bay for good. Every once in a while, the Holy Men would come onto another gang's turf and stomp on them for fun, like an earthquake rolling through. It was enough to keep fresh blood constantly rolling into the other gangs, because once the Holy Men were done with you, you had plenty of old blood getting swept out, often into the bay in a cloud of gray ashes. Benny had given Jo the same warning: "Don't fuck with the Holy Men. Hell, don't fuck with anybody if you don't have to. I hear the Holy Men keep operatives in other gangs just to keep tabs on 'em."

So he didn't. If he recognized a Bull, or a Centipede, or a Shark, he didn't say a word. He never recognized a Holy Man, but if he did, he wouldn't say anything. There were a couple reasons for this. Just because he recognized one didn't mean he recognized all of them, and if he turned one in, it was as likely as a sunrise that he would be recognized right back and his brothers would pay him back in blood and broken teeth, or worse. It was because of this that he worried that he would be put in solitary confinement for his own safety; punished for doing the right thing. There was also that he just didn't care; they were already locked up, if the cops weren't smart enough to figure out who they were dealing with, then they deserved to let them slip through the cracks.

But really, Jo almost liked being in jail. He got an hour in the yard every day to play poker with whatever group had gotten together, he had enough room to work out in his eight-by-six cell, and there were some good comic books in the jail library. The Child Services rep was gone now, but his public defender would come around on visitation day every few months, wearing that same cheap suit, and promise him, "You're doing just fine, no involvement with any trouble, no incidents, you got your education, you'll be out after a year." He suggested Jo take some college courses through the correspondence in the library, but Jo didn't care enough. If he was going to do college, he would do it outside. Outside felt awful close, especially out in the jail yard. The whitewashed brick walls were so high he could scarcely see the barbed wire, and the sky looked different every day. It helped Jo keep tabs on the time passed.

Most of the guys kept time by visitation days- "My boo came three days ago, so she'll be here again in eleven. Wonder if they'll let us have a little, hehe, _conjugal_." Jo didn't. Nobody came to see him. If Benny had copped a plea and got back out on the streets, he sure as hell wasn't looking back for Jo, and if Jack was alive and in the same city, the same state, shit, on this side of the goddamned country, Jo had no idea how to get in touch with him and tell him he was there and to come visit, or if Jack would even want to visit. Probably not, Jo figured. There was a reason Jack had never come back for him, one that he'd never had a chance to ask about and probably never would. Instead, Jo watched the sun in the sky through his ten-inch square window or from the broad expanse of the dirt-packed prison yard and counted the days from bad weather.

"It rained nine days ago. The ground's pretty dusty now. I wonder if it'll rain again soon."

It was a rainy day Jo remembered best, or maybe worst. That was the day he decided he didn't want to go back to jail. That was the day he had nightmares about, even three years into his parole. He got his release a year early, as promised, but after _that_ day, Jo had stopped counting.

It made Jo grateful he couldn't remember his dreams so well, especially not after a few hours awake, not after three years of freedom. Remembering things kind of sucked, but while it was easy not to remember, it was hard to forget. Maybe that was why he still had nightmares about that face that had stared up at him from the mud, that soft, faint, laughing voice:

_"You're... covered in blood too..."_

"Jesus fuckin' Christ." Jo lit a Lucky Strike and stuffed his hands in his pocket and squeezed, trying to make himself not remember again. It was the rain doing it, he was sure; raining today, rained yesterday, probably would tomorrow. It's not like getting wet bothered him much. Jo didn't own an umbrella or bother with more than zipping his jacket up. Maybe it was that stupid vanity kicking in again, but he thought his hair looked sexy wet, like lava running down his shoulders, but it was the suede of his jacket that kept his skinny chest warm in the damp, chill wind. He kept his head low to try and keep the cherry bright under the shade of his forehead, but with the drops thicker than spills from shotglasses, it didn't go so well, and he ducked under an overhang to finish his smoke. Luckies were a little pricier than most, but since Jo didn't spend much on food, he could spare to splurge on his preferred brand. Still didn't mean he wanted to lose one to the rain. He heard someone walking past sniff at him as he took a drag, and rolled his eyes- _"Yeah, yeah, fuckin' anti-smoker laws, probably shouldn't be in the fucking door way- motherfucker, __you__ stand thirty feet from a fuckin' door in this fuckin' weather!"_- but finished his cigarette just as his phone rang again. He yanked it from his pocket and swiped the screen. "What's up, Ken?"

"Hi, Jojo!" A chipper, strident, girly voice spoke over the grumbling tenor Jo had been expecting. "Jojo, are you still being a slowpoke layabout, or is my big brother teaching you right?"

"Shut up, Lily!" Ken grunted, and Jo suppressed a snicker. He hated being called 'Jojo,' but he loved the thought of idiotic little Lily spilling Ken's innermost thoughts onto any open line. "Jo, where the hell are you? I need you to take on an office thing, and I need it twenty minutes ago."

"I had to walk, asshole, you seen this goddamned rain?" Jo spat his butt into a puddle. "The buses ain't running 'cause of the flood watch, because why the fuck would the buses wanna run when people don't wanna walk places, and my bike's right the hell out with traffic this bad because the second a drop hits the ground around here, fuckers slow down to five miles an hour and start steering with their ballsacks, so what goddamn choice do I have?"

"Whatever." Ken groaned just off the receiver. "You're gonna need a bike, but I'll loan you the spare. Just get here as quick as you can, or I'll find someone who will." He abruptly hung up, and Jo snickered aloud this time. Just for that, he would have one more cigarette before dragging himself in. Ken might have threatened to fire him on a weekly basis, but he was a pretty good boss. Yana, his parole officer, had gotten him a courier job at West Side Deliveries straight out of jail, and had promised him that Ken was good to his employees and despite being a bit rough on the outside, very tolerant. "Loyal," was what she had called it, but Jo didn't quite see it. The job paid enough to make his rent, pay his bills and get cheap cable, he siphoned off the neighbor's internet for his work computer, and it kept him busy enough, though he still had nights off to go to the pool hall on Eastern Avenue for a few dozen rounds of poker to waste whatever he had left over with whoever would let him. He didn't have to worry about anything. Life was okay, the same kind of okay jail had been.

"It's easy," Jo grumbled to himself, and finished his second cigarette. Even the nicotine rush didn't block out that mud-and-blood stained memory. "It's so easy I could puke." He threw the butt away and splashed on through the rain, through the motions, onto the nuts and bolts that made everyday life what it was. It wasn't like he could just get out of it.

* * *

Ken usually made Jo do pick-ups, since he didn't have his own car. If he needed to do a delivery, he could drive a company car, but Jo knew his way around the city on foot down cold. He could stagger in hung over or even still drunk from the night before, and still know the quickest way from one end of the ward to the other to go and fetch whatever it was that needed delivery. Ken sometimes wondered if those wild hairs that stuck up from his bangs were antennae that told him where the accidents were and which cross streets would get the "walk" signal first. Jo usually told him to fuck himself whenever he tugged at them- "You think I'm some douchebag, wanna wear hair gel all the fucking time?" Ken would snicker at him. Ken could actually be kind of cool like that, but with unkempt hair like his, he probably didn't want to take back what he was dishing out. Luckily, Ken was only interested in dishing out orders today.

"The front desk computer's gone to shit again. I need you to take it to Extreme Dataflow and get Zack to do whatever and make it work, and I need it today. Sit on him if you have to."

It was little things like this that made Jo question just how good of a boss Ken was. Kenneth Maoh had inherited the business from his mother at age nineteen, and he'd done a pretty good job of keeping them in the black, but Ken was either naïve or stupid and Jo wasn't sure which. Naive was reasonable- maybe Ken didn't know what kind of asshole Zack was. Jo had known Zack from his "associate" days with the Crows, another "associate" he hadn't bothered mentioning in hi deposition, and giving him your computer was basically like saying "Please, Zack, take my name, address, social security number, and credit card information off my hard drive. I wasn't using that money or credit score." Maybe Ken just didn't know that Zack was just as rotten as Jo, but hadn't been caught yet. Stupid was a worse option- Ken knew, but like he trusted Jo after a few years of employment, he'd been dealing with Zack long enough that he trusted him or maybe even owed him one stupid favor that he paid back with monthly invoices. Maybe that was why Ken always sent him to deal with Zack- maybe Ken did know about Zack, and since he definitely knew what Jo was, he could trust Jo to keep him safe from whatever scheme Zack was running this week.

Extreme Dataflow- Jo had no idea what was so Extreme about it, except that it was maybe opened in the Nineties when everything had to be "extreme"- was a nondescript, concrete-block building on the North side of little Shangri-La. It only really stood out because it was painted white next to the dull, umber brick of the adjoining rowhouses, and the side wall was covered in stark black and green text, handpainted on in chipping acrylic: "We fix all computers and laptops! Macs – Windows – Linux – iPads – Tablets – Video Game Systems" along with a little illustration of an old Commodore 64 with a face and a thermometer sticking out of its mouth. There was a flickering neon "Open" sign hanging in the window facing the larger of the streets at its corner, and Jo put the company bike into park and chained it to one of the bars on the outside window. He hauled the clunky old computer and monitor, shielded from the rain in two layers of garbage bags, out of his rear bike basket and backed into the door, whirling around to shake the water off as he did so.

"Yo! Zack!" He shook his hair off, wrung it out, and grinned at the idiot on the other side of the desk. Zack shook mussed, oily dull-blonde hair back and shoved his cellphone into his desk to greet Jo with a clapped high-five.

"Jojo, I thought you couldn't swim!" He laughed sharply, and Jo chuckled and wrung his hair out onto the floor behind him. Thunder struck outside, and the wind pounded the rain harder against the glass to emphasize its strength. The building settled from the second floor, and Jo could swear he heard a creak from the stairwell behind the dividing wall. "The fuck are you doing out in weather like this?"

"The boss' computer's gone belly up, and he needs somethin' done about it. No fancy shit, either." Jo folded his arms sternly, and Zack shook his head and let out a weaselly, nervous laugh.

"Come on, Jo, I learned some new tricks! S'called the Illusion." He wiggled his fingers like a magician entertaining toddlers. "Just plant a few lines of code in the security coding on your favorite browsers, and a fraction of any online purchase made vanishes- like magic!- Kenny won't even-"

"No." Jo put steel in his voice and fixed Zack with a stern look. "He said the monitor and computer tower ain't on speaking terms, and he just wants you t'make 'em friends again. Can ya do that?"

"Ah, jeez." Zack slicked his hair back, but the fringe fell back over his eye. There was a rustle from the open door into the darkened room behind him. Jo could spot a few computer towers and laptops with their guts out on the desk. Zack plugged the monitor in and depressed the power button, and set his elbow on the desk to watch the screen flicker to life. "I mean, I can fuck with it a little, but I'm definitely more of a software guy and that sounds like a hardware issue, and since Dougie got arrested-"

"Shiiiiit." Jo dug his hand up into his hair. Zakuro nodded sympathetically, and pulled a wire up from another tower and plugged it in. "That ass got caught?"

"Nowhere near here, thank god. Apparently he got caught doin' somethin' or other off the clock." Zack squinted at the monitor. "I mean, this side looks like it's working." He shook his head. "Probably somethin' on the inside, but without Doug..." He smirked up at Jo. "Well, lucky me, I got a new guy." He glanced over his shoulder, and Jo followed his gaze to spot a shadow dodging out of the open door. "He ain't like us, y'know, but he's plenty good at what he does. Think you wanna give him a shot? He's almost as brilliant as I am." Zack grinned a cocky grin, and Jo chuckled.

"Sure, but whoever he is, he better be ready for me to lean on him. Ken wants this today. No excuses." He set his hands on his hips. "I'll zip around town getting parts if you need it, just to keep him off my ass." Zack smirked, and leaned around the corner in through the door behind him.

"You gonna keep bein' shy, or are you gonna be polite and say hello to my old buddy here?" Jo was reminded of a cat dragged on a lead towards a dog as Zack coaxed the poor nerd out from the work room. Jo braced himself not to snicker at pizza-face pimples or a dorky, grease-stained Doctor Who tee-shirt- he wasn't mean, but how bad did this guy have to be to hide like that?

Jo hadn't expected green. Zack dragged out a slight, lean man who was paler than expected, with bright- like, weirdly bright- green eyes. The brightness of those eyes stood out against his dark brown hair, which stood in contrast again to pale skin. His black-rimmed glasses were askew on his nose, and the right lens was cracked under the shag of his bangs. He was clean-shaved, clean-faced, and almost pretty, for a dude. Jo had expected a fat nerd, not an out-of-place banker or overgrown school boy. He looked bewildered, but not too put off, and managed to push his jaw shut as he landed in front of the desk. He gently shook Zack's hand off and smoothed the buttons on his shirt, then his sleeve. "My apologies for not joining the conversation sooner." He met Jo's eyes and bowed his head. "I did not wish to interrupt what seemed to be a pleasant reunion between old friends."

"You got that right," Zack snickered, and nudged the man forward. "Me an' Jo, we go way back. West Side's one of our most loyal customers. Jo, this's Harley. Harley, Jo."

Harley extended a hand, and Jo took it and shook it. His smooth lips slipped up into an easy smile, but one Jo wasn't sure was completely real. "My pleasure, certainly." His voice was even, it canted and dipped with sweetness and honey, and while Jo didn't care much for sweets, there was definitely a bitter to this sweet. Jo grinned easily back, and clapped his other hand around their shake.

"Pleasure's mine. So, uh, you Zack's new hardware dude?"

"Oh, I do a bit of everything." Harley glanced to the window. "Erm, would you mind coming up to my work space? And could you carry that?" He gestured to the computer, and with another smile, it was difficult to say no.

The narrow stairs up to the office echoed Jo's footsteps as he thundered his way up, monitor in the crook of one arm and tower under the other, but Harley walked softly, as if he weren't even there. The upstairs room was neater than Jo remembered seeing it when Doug had worked there; no papers on the desk, and parts and pieces in tiny plastic storage drawers with neatly-written labels. There were no gutted computers like the downstairs work bench, though a mysterious high dome covered with a cloth was oddly conspicuous on the end of the desk. Jo didn't want to ask. There was at least the familiarity of the busted-up spinning chair that Jo got to sit in while Doug worked, usually seated on a vinyl stool with wheels on it and skittering around the floor between whatever creepy porn he'd been watching and the work he was supposed to be doing. He hoped he wouldn't have to worry about that with Harley, but the prim nerd seemed repressed enough (from what little he'd seen) that he could control whatever urges he had until he was off the clock. The blinds were all drawn, and though Jo had heard strains of music when he'd walked in, the noise silenced when Harley crossed the threshold and touched a button on a speaker set beside the door. "Were you listenin' to that?" Jo nodded to the radio. "I don't mind." He set the monitor and tower down, and Harley hesitated, before reaching out and turning the music back on. It was nothing Jo recognized, and maybe even a little out of the ordinary.

_"Where you been hidin' lately? Where you been hidin' from the noose?"_

"What station is this?" Jo grinned over his shoulder at Harley, who'd busied himself with unscrewing the side wall of the tower.

"It's an internet station. Indie, soft rock."

"No wonder I've never heard of it. I'm more of a Guns 'n' Roses kinda guy myself." Jo held up the "rock" symbol with his index and pinky finger extended. He expected a smile, a chuckle, a nod, anything, but Harley was more interested in the insides of the computer tower. "Y'know, Kix? Metallica maybe? I've actually kinda got a thing for the Charm City Devils right now." Harley didn't seem to react, and the music played on.

_"Red tongues and hands..."_

"But, uh, whatever floats your boat." Jo settled himself into the spinning chair and gave it a few test sways- it didn't bob under his weight, so it had been fixed somewhere between now and the last time he'd paid a visit. Harley glanced over his shoulder, an apologetic slant to his eyes.

"I would have left it off, but I prefer the music to the noise." Jo frowned, but in the quiet that Harley let sit, he could hear the rain drumming on the roof. He stared up at it, until the rustle of paper in front of him got his attention. Harley offered a few forms and a yellow and pink pen with a "Bail Bonds" logo. "Would you fill these out? I know the previous gentleman often neglected these, but..." He trailed off indicatively, unable to fill the void.

"Oh, oh yeah." He shuffled the papers to straighten them and filled them out- basic information, like his name and company and what brought him to the shop- and Harley retreated to his desk and started sliding out boards and cases one by one. "So, uh, you another buddy of Zack's? How'd you get the job?"

"Ah, well, my parole officer-" Harley flinched, and Jo looked up.

"_You_ have a parole officer?" Jo rose both eyebrows, and Harley slowly turned around, his hands meeting in front of his stomach.

"If that offends you, then my sincerest apologies." The tips of his fingers battled one another like a spider clicking her spinnerets. "Would you like me to see if Zack can work on your computer instead?"

"What? Why the hell would I want that?"

"If you believe me untrustworthy."

"Dude, Zack may not have a rap sheet yet, but like hell if he's trustworthy." Jo grinned and sat back in the chair. "You're cool. I'm an ex-con too. Why?" He put his feet up onto the empty desk, kicking mud out of the grooves in his boots. "That turn you off? Lots of ladies hate it, but how about you?"

"Ah..." Harley trailed off again, mouth hung open before he remembered to lock his jaw. "I'm not disgusted by it, no. As long as... no, never mind." He quickly turned around again, and Jo laughed and sat back in the chair. It rocked back to catch him, and he leaned his head back until it bumped the wall.

"Jesus fucking Christ, guy, don't be so uptight." He crossed his legs, one over the other. "I don't bite. I only gotta sit here to make sure we're getting our worth on the rush charge, and like I told Zack, I can go anywhere in the city you need if we need parts. I'm just making conversation, but if you don't want to talk to me, just say so."

"Isn't that just masturbation?"

"What?" Jo sat forward all at once, feet landing on the floor, and Harley turned again.

"Jesus fucking Christ. Since Jesus is the Christ, isn't Jesus fucking Christ just masturbation?" Harley smiled again, another one of those not-quite-there gestures, but Jo laughed hard. Harley giggled along, a slim hand lifted to his lips, and Jo spun the chair around completely.

"Alright, smartass, that cans it. I'm gonna sit here and talk to you whether you like it or not." Jo splayed both legs around the chair. "So, tell me, Harley, what put a straight-laced smarty like you in the slammer?"

Harley smiled again, an almost-real one this time. "I'm afraid there's little to tell."

"Don't care. I'm interested now." Jo grinned, but even he couldn't totally suss out why he was so curious. Maybe it was those bright, way-too-bright green eyes. Jo had been a city kid his whole life, walled in with brick and concrete, asphalt and cement. Even jail had been nothing but shades of red and gray. He wasn't sure when anything green had come into his life before, and if nothing else, it was enough to get him out of his own head on a gloomy, gray day like this.

And Harley smiled completely. "I suppose nothing less will keep you satisfied." Jo grinned; he was right. He was sure he hadn't been so interested in anything in a very, very long time.

* * *

**End Notes:** The music on Harley's radio is "The Wolves" by Ben Howard.

If you liked it, let me know! Like I said, no set update schedule, but I should hopefully have more done within the next few weeks.


	2. Harley and his Split Mask

**Staying Straight**

**Author Notes: **My apologies for the delay! Other stories, full time job, all that silly nonsense.

**Disclaimer:** The original characters of Saiyuki are not mine.

* * *

**2: Harley and his Split Mask**

"Joel Sha?" Harley's lower lip didn't seem to want to close on its own, and hung just open as he read the finished information sheet. Jo had never seen a man gut a computer so quickly and easily, and now sat slackjawed deliberately in awe. He'd labeled each part and hooked them up to little black boxes Jo couldn't even name. The clean desk was now a mass of wires and blinking, flashing lights, and yet, there was a certain amount of order to the chaos. "I don't often hear Joel shortened- let me note your preferred name down."

"Well, Joel's kind of a dork name." Jo picked his jaw up and spun the chair back towards Harley again. "Not that there's anythin' wrong with dorks, I just-" He frowned when he saw what Harley had written. "Jo, Jay-Oh. No E."

"Oh?" Harley's lips thinned, but he scratched out the "E" in "Joe." "They're homophones, you know."

"Hama-what?"

"They sound the same." Harley tapped the paper. "Either Joe."

"Joe with an E is a redneck name. I ain't a damn country boy." Jo clicked his teeth together, a little gesture of disgust. "I mean, most folks don't know the difference, but I do, and that's kinda all that matters." He kicked back in the chair, rocking towards the wall again. Harley chuckled.

"Joseph is quite a common name, and Joel is much the same. There are Joes in every walk of life-"

"Yeah, well, they ain't me!" Jo folded his arms. "This Jo grew up listening to that stupid 'Cotton-Eye Joe' song at every grade school dance I got left at, and since I already went by Jo, every single asshole in my class asked me if I had cotton eyes. I mean, come on, how about you?" He flung a hand up towards Harley. "Name like Harley, didn't you get a shitload of, 'Where's your motorcycle, Harley? Can I get a ride?'"He held his fists out and rocked them forward to rev his engines, and Harley laughed, airy but humorless.

"I suppose such a thing would be so. But I didn't use the name Harley as a child."

"Oh." Jo settled in the chair. He'd heard of guys changing their names after prison, and figured it wouldn't be too nice to poke at it any further. Not with someone he just met. "So, uh, when did you get out?"

"I was released-" Harley paused to count, then tapped a few buttons keys on a portable keyboard hooked up to what looked like a hardened, flattened square of chunky green salsa. "Ah. I suppose it was thirty-seven days ago." He unplugged the keyboard and moved to the next apparatus, to a nod from Jo.

"Fresh out. You must still be in that honeymoon afterglow of the real goddamned world." Jo grinned, and gave his hair another wring. "So-"

"And how long have you been out?" Harley smiled over his shoulder, then moved his keyboard to the next little green board. His lithe fingers untwisted and twined the thin wires with ease; it was fun to watch. "You seem relaxed in the real, er, goddamned world."

"Heh, well, I relax wherever." Jo grinned, and kicked his feet up onto the desk again. "I've been out for three years. I mean, it's not like the day I got out anymore. I was just runnin' around aimlessly, looking for someone to fuck or fight or-" He heard Harley click his tongue, then giggle. "What, what'd you do your first day out?"

"After meeting with my parole officer, going to the pharmacy, and visiting a therapist, I volunteered at a shelter for the homeless."

"Ho-lee-shit." Jo laughed, a sonorous, rolling noise that echoed on the walls. "Model fuckin' prisoner, you."

"I'm not so sure what makes it holy." Harley scooted his chair to what looked like a hamster wheel under solid steel and attached his little keyboard to it. Jo rolled the conversation back, then laughed again.

"Yeah, me neither!" He laughed again, and Harley giggled too, then started to type on the keyboard again.

"Forgive my pitiful humor; I'm just of the opinion that swears and pejoratives are something of a waste of air, and meaningless. If one can't carry a conversation without them, then there surely aren't enough other words in his head."

Jo snorted and flicked one of his stray strands of hair back behind his ear. "Well, that's me in a nutshell. Real pretty head with nothin' inside of it." Harley paused, fingers hovered over the flat keyboard.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way."

"What?" Jo smiled. "I know I ain't that bright."

"No, no, I'm certain you're wonderful; but-" Harley's eyes skimmed over him. "You can't have been more than a child when you were arrested if you're already three years out of jail. It was cruel of them to pull you out of school." Jo snorted, but tossed some of the loose hair beside his face back over his shoulder.

"I was fifteen, but I was out of school way before that. Look, I'm not looking for pity. Hell, I'm pretty impressed you're, uh, doin' what you're doin." Jo twirled a finger at the collection of angular parts that made up the inside of the computer tower. "What the hell are you doin', anyway?"

"Ah." Harley looked back over at the scattered mess of parts. "I'm individually testing the responses of each of your major components that could cause the sort of failure you described."

"What?"

"Take, for example, the graphics card." Harley held up one indiscernible hunk of motherboard. "If this fails, or if there's a bad connection, then even if everything else is operating, you will see nothing on the screen. Then again," he started to move to the next chunk of computer guts, but Jo held up a hand.

"It's magic! It's magic. I get it." Jo laughed uneasily. "I don't think I ever saw Dougie use one of those, though." He nodded to Harley's little keyboard.

"Oh, this?" Harley smiled, this one a sly, catlike, hell, Jo would hazard _proud_ little grin. "This is a device of my own invention. A few spare parts, a bit of programming, and it's my own _magic_ little tricorder."

"Tricorder?"

"Star Trek?"

"It's all geek to me." Jo grinned. "You pick that up behind bars?"

"Oh, I've always been something of a tinkerer. I enjoy taking things apart." Harley moved along with his work. "It's interesting, understanding how things work, and the best way to do so is to see inside." He giggled to himself, and tapped a few more keys. "Putting them back together is the hard part- Ah." His free hand grasped out without turning away from the part on the desk in front of him, and he reached into a drawer for a small, funnel-shaped glass, pushed his glasses up and put the glass over his right eye. In a blink, the little keyboard was pushed aside and Harley had the piece in his hand and up close to his face. "Oh, my, my, my."

"What's wrong?" Jo stuffed his hands into his pockets and leaned forward. "You figure it out?"

"These terminals are all fried." He squinted into the little glass cone. "This piece- ah, er, this piece essentially transfers data from the tower to the monitor." He turned it slightly to get a different angle, and clicked his tongue with pity. "Oh, my my, even the redundancies. There must have been some sort of huge surge. Is this computer on a circuit breaker?" Jo shrugged, and Harley sighed into his palm. "Without these connections, there is no communication between the box and the screen. If they can't communicate, then they can't be friends at all, I'm afraid."

Jo basically understood the last part. "Well, shit. What do we do?"

"Nothing, just yet. I'll see if I have spare parts for this model, but for the moment, allow me to test the rest of these pieces." Harley set the glass down and away. "It's very likely that if one piece was shorted out in a surge, several others may have been affected too. While you may be assisting in your own rush charge by offering to go to my suppliers, I'd rather not send you away for one piece if I then find more that needs replacing. Not in this awful weather." He made a few quick notes on the tag attached to the piece, then moved to the next.

Jo watched for a minute as he started with the keyboard again. "Damn. You're a real sleuth, huh?" He grinned, and couldn't help but be impressed. Doug had been a good tech, but never quite so quick and efficient, and he lacked Harley's entertaining, prim quirks. Watching was almost kind of fun. "So, that little tube you were using-"

"A jeweler's glass. I've some rather severe nerve damage to my right eye. My distance vision is null, and even things up close can be, well, fuzzy. The glass helps me to focus."

"Righty's fucked, huh? I was gonna ask about the glasses, but-" Jo tapped under his right eye, and Harley mirrored it.

"My glasses?" He put the keyboard down and took them off, and squinted at the lens. Jo noticed only his left eye could focus, and a red mark under the right that he hadn't seen before. "Oh. Oh, it's- oh." He bit his lower lip, then put his glasses back on and his smile right back with it. "I can't see it at all with them on." He laughed to himself, though Jo could see nothing funny. "I'd worry more about getting them fixed if it would make a difference."

"Honestly, kinda threw me off." Jo smiled a little; it was contagious. "Makes you look kinda, y'know, weird."

Harley giggled, genuinely. "Perhaps eccentricity suits me. I am, after all, a computer geek." He took up his keyboard again, and Jo shook his head, then relaxed back into the seat back again.

"No shame in being a computer geek; it's cool, y'know? Where'd you learn all this, anyway? You said puttin' stuff back together was harder than takin' it apart, so-"

"Ah, I took a correspondence course through the library, through Sojourner University." He smiled. "It was something to do with my hands during free periods, I could read in my cell, and unlike some of my co-patients, I was lucid enough to enjoy intellectual pursuits. I'm trying to get back into college now-"

"Wait, did you say co-patients?" Jo's ears perked- he'd almost forgotten just how curious he was about Harley's crime. Harley seemed to have been counting on that, and turned to face Jo, slouched over.

"Erm. Yes. I suppose I was not in jail, per se." He lifted two fingers on each hand to make air-quotes, head slumped between slouching shoulders. "'Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.'" He lifted both hands up in a shrug. "I spent three years in an asylum, deemed sane enough to return to the outside world, and here I am." Harley dropped his hands. "It's precisely as simple as that."

Jo was starting to see why Harley had changed his name to that- the way he could shift so quickly between happy and miserable reminded him of those old clown masks that were split right down the middle the same way. It made the guy impossible to read, but it didn't make Jo want to stop trying. Harley seemed to study Jo's half-open mouth, until Jo broke into a broad grin and changed the subject to try and give the poor guy a break. "Temporary insanity. Wish I'd thought'a that. They caught my ass red handed-"

"Wouldn't that be red-cheeked?" Harley giggled and turned back to his work, and Jo quickly was.

"You gonna give me shit every time I swear?"

"Well, that would be awfully messy, wouldn't it?"

"You're damn right it-" Jo considered it, and winced. "Goddammit!" Harley laughed, and it almost made up for him laughing at his own jokes. When he was genuinely laughing, it was a nice noise, light and pleasant, if a bit hollow. Jo sniffed to himself, as Harley caught his breath to continue.

"So, what were you caught red-handed at?"

"Robbery job." Jo started to rock in the chair. It creaked under him as he slowly swayed back to the wall, then released forward. "Buddy of mine asked me to watch the door while he went for the safe. Shit went sour, cops showed up. I could'a ran, but, well, that's just now how I work."

"You'd rather fight on the off chance that you'd win than turn your back."

"Hell, I ain't that stupid." Jo pushed the chair all the way into the back wall. "No, my buddies were still inside. I was hoping to get 'em out."

"Ah." Harley nodded, then pulled the wires off his miniature keyboard loose from the chunk of computer he'd been working at. "The reception terminals are ruined on this, too."

"Shit," Jo groaned, as Harley made a few notes on a nearby pad. "So, uh, what'd you-"

"I suppose you felt justified in staying to save your friends, but why were you conducting a robbery in the first place?"

"Uh." Boy, he changed subjects fast. One judgmental look over the emptied computer case, and Jo clicked his teeth together and answered, "Well, I owed the guy a favor. He helped me out when I was in a pinch here and there, so I kinda owed it to him. He said I'd just have to stand there and keep watch. He messed up, and it got messy. We'd done a lot of stuff like this before- I was the muscle, and he did the dirty work."

"The brains of the operation, I suppose?"

"Hah! If you could call Benny the brains. Guy was dumber than a box of retarded kittens."

"The whole box, you say?"

"Well, he wasn't totally useless." Jo shrugged, and sat forward in the chair. His ears were starting to burn from talking about Benny. "So, you know my whole story, when do I get a turn? Or is this a goddamned interview?"

"Hm." Harley set another hunk of computer chips aside and made a few more notes. "Have I made you talk too much? I'm sorry." Jo rolled his eyes, and Harley didn't notice. "I suppose it's nice to have someone else to talk to, rather than listen to the sound of my own voice all day." He lifted a finger, in a way that made Jo think of an elementary school teacher trying to draw attention. "I'm also rather interested in voices, and accents, and I can't place your origins from your speech patterns." He smiled; Jo could see it from the shift in his cheekbones even with his back turned. "I have to keep you talking so I can keep trying. It's frustrating, but amusing."

"Pfft. Amusing. Like I'm some fucking court jester." Jo spun in the chair once. "Alright, Emperor Prospero, your turn."

"Emperor Prospero?" Harley didn't miss a beat, and was now hooking some of the pieces of the computer back together.

"Masque of the Red Death. One of my favorites." Jo glanced to the window. It was still raining- a dark and stormy night, he thought with a small smirk, even though the display on his cellphone said "11:47 am." Harley glanced over his shoulder and quirked an eyebrow up.

"You've read Poe?"

"Who's Poe?"

"The author." Harley fixed Jo with a level, wary stare, the kind you'd give someone who just beamed down from a spaceship. "Of the short story."

"You mean that movie came from a book?"

"I suppose you learn something new every day." Harley giggled again. "But no, tell me about the movie. I rather liked the story, when I read it."

"There's no way some stupid book is better than this movie!"

"And what about it fascinates you so?" Harley continued his work, and Jo grinned.

"This is gonna blow your mind, man."

It was strange- someone who just wanted to listen to him talk. Who would've thought he'd get that from a wiry nerd with a set-in-stone smile?

All told, it took Harley half an hour to pull apart, examine, and partially reassemble the computer tower, and he kept Jo talking through most of it. He got Jo to talk about the movies he liked- and there were a lot- and even showed marginal interest in the Birds' score from the previous night and the awesome double-play in the eighth inning- "Just sucks they were already down by six, y'know?" Once he was finished with the computer, though, he was all business again.

"The connection ports on the graphics driver are beyond repair. I will need those replaced. I'll be able to solder some of these-" He gestured at a handful of chips on the table- "back into working order, but it may take some time."

"Hrm." Jo scratched his head. "Look, you know a lot more about it than me, so I have to take your word for it. You ain't rippin' me off, are ya?"

"I should be offended, but from what little I've heard about this Douglas Go, I don't blame you." Harley glanced down to the floor. "Not to mention what I've seen in Mr. Zack."

"Eh. Crows. What're ya gonna do?" Jo shrugged. Harley seemed to stiffen at the gang's name, but gave his head a shake and met Jo's eyes.

"You can trust me. I'm an honest man, especially when it comes to my work." He cocked his head and pressed his fingers to his lips, a soft giggle barely suppressed. "I'm honest in most things, perhaps too much so. For example, I could charge for the diagnostic process, though it's against policy, because I don't think anyone reads the whole bill; or I could pick out a few more parts that could use upgrades but don't require attention, and tell you they're ruined, and you'd be none the wiser, but for this computer to operate, I just need everything on this list." He held out a piece of paper with stark, neat handwriting, covered in words Jo couldn't even begin to decode.

"Huh." He looked it over, and grinned at Harley. "Wonder how many times Dougie pulled one over on me in just the ways you described." He whipped out his cellphone. "Ain't my money, but it's nice that you ain't stealin' it from me."

Harley watched Jo send a few texts with unusually quick fingers, then dialed a number from his contacts list and started reading off the manifest he'd given him. He looked away as he started to stumble over "reception port," and Jo noticed him lift the cover over the dome at the end of the desk just enough to expose thin wire bars and poured water in through the wires from his water bottle. Jo didn't seem to pay attention as he grumbled out a credit card number rote. He hung up, and Harley had finished with the dome in the corner and plugged in a handheld soldering iron. "They've got it all in stock. I'll be back."

"Just, one last thing before you go." Harley glanced up. "You know of Zack's affiliation?"

"Huh?" Jo paused. "Wait, like, with the gangs? It's not like he keeps it a secret." He shrugged, but couldn't help but notice Harley stiffen further, even as he went on. "He's not a Crow, not a full member, he just does side work for them."

"And how do you know all that?"

"Used to do some work for 'em myself." Jo set his shoulders back, as Harley seemed to turn to stone in front of him.

"I see." He straightened up slowly and faced Jo, and Jo watched any reality slip from his polite, retail-trained smile. "I think you'd best go." All the stiffness in his posture had joined with his voice, and Jo felt like a wall had come up.

"Yeah. 'M goin'. I'll be back soon." He turned and fled. He couldn't help but feel like Harley had wanted to jump him on the spot, and not in the sexy way (though both threw Jo off a little bit, coming from a dude.) The guy was hot and cold, like hell (depending on who you asked), but it only really made Jo more curious. What the hell even was this Harley guy?

It hit him- Harley knew his favorite movies, knew at least a little of his story, and seemed to bend to his personality as if he'd been inside of his head. What did he know about him?

Not a damn thing.

* * *

The rain had slowed when Jo got back to Extreme Dataflow, and wasn't surprised to find Zack with his feet up on the desk, watching a movie on a tablet that Jo was pretty sure didn't belong to him. "You fuckin' show-off, you're gonna get caught."

"Pfft, 'least I'm not fuckin' Doug." Zack glanced over his shoulder, then back to Jo. "I think Harl's upstairs, so I can totally spill the beans." He put the tablet down and pressed his elbows to the desk with a sly grin. "You wanna hear it?"

Jo groaned and looked over his shoulder as well, before rushing in close to the desk. "What'd that idiot do?"

"The dumb fuck got caught with his pants down in a movie theater." Zack snickered. "It wasn't even a porno, it was a fucking slasher flick!"

"Jesus." Jo wanted to laugh, but, well, holy shit. How long had he spent with the creep without picking up on that? "Uh, you think he's coming back?"

"It's been like a month." Zack tossed his hair back like he was a supermodel, and Jo didn't even see any women through the window. "I got Harl now. Doug ain't comin' back here."

"Yeah, lucky you." Jo chewed his lower lip, as Zack pulled a hand mirror from his shirt pocket and combed his hair. Jo didn't see the point- it was pretty heavily gelled. "So, uh, Harl-"

"Yeah, I wanted to ask, the hell, man?" Zack shoved the comb away with a flourish and grinned lewdly at Jo. "You walk in and it's like you're his best friend, but I gave his ass a job and he walks past me like I'm a doormat, and let me tell you this, Jojo, my ass is _not_ a doormat." He cocked one hip. "Way too sexy for that."

"Oh, shut up." Jo strode past him. "Never mind. He prob'ly wouldn't'a told you if he didn't like you." He carried himself up the thin stairwell to a scoff from Zack, and knocked on the closed door to the second-floor office. "Yo, uh, Harley? I got the parts."

There was no answer, and Jo nudged the door with his toe. The radio was still playing softly from its shelf beside the door, and Harley was leaned over some of the motherboard with the soldering iron in his hands, as natural as a chunk of sidewalk chalk for a child, but with none of the joy. Both bright eyes were dim and focused on the task at hand. Jo cautiously stepped in, and fished into his jacket pocket for the brown paper bag. "Hey, man-"

"I heard you. You can give them to me and leave." Harley didn't flinch, didn't stop, and Jo slowly put the bag down, then nudged it towards him like it was a can of tuna for a scared but wild cat.

"There ya go." Jo took a step back. "Uh, look, I'm getting' the feelin' I offended you earlier, and I don't know what I-"

"I need to concentrate. Leave."

"Right." Jo took a few more steps back, watched the thin line of Harley's back and neck as he hunched over his work. Jo hesitated. The radio was audible this close to his ear:

_"Gracious, goes the ghost of you-"_

In a second, Harley was beside him, palm slamming onto the radio's on-off switch, close, too close to Jo. He wasn't much smaller than Jo, and he didn't look smaller with red in his cheeks and anger obvious in his brow.

"Leave. Go. Unless you insist on talking to me."

"I'm-" Jo swallowed- why did it hurt this much to be pushed out by someone he'd only just met? "Yeah. Sorry. Just- you have my number." He turned tail and scrambled back down the stairs, feeling like Harley had sucked the blood out of his skull.

Guy was definitely in full sad-clown mode, that was for sure, and he couldn't keep from being a little pissed off as he walked back past Zack spinning in his chair, who whistled softly as Jo passed. "Ooh, now you get angry Harley. I don't think I've met angry Harley," Zack drawled in a nigh smug, superior way, and Jo's lip curled. "Here I thought you had a new boyfriend!"

"Oh, shut the fuck up." Jo whipped a cigarette out of his pocket, giving absolutely no fucks about the anti-smoker laws with Zack's grin creeping down the side of his face. "What the fuck is with that guy?"

"He's, like, a BDSM dominatrix."

"Dude-" Jo's eyes went wide.

"Beats the fuck out of me!" Zack laughed hard, and Jo shuddered.

"That's not even cool, dude." He slicked his hair back a few times. "No, seriously."

"Seriously, I got nothing." Zack spun back and kicked his feet up onto the wall, arms folded behind his head and leaning his head over the back of the chair. "He was referred here by his parole officer, so I thought he'd be cool, y'know? Thought he'd be one of us, yeah?" Zack glanced up over his shoulder, and Jo was starting to think Zack might be just the slightest bit afraid of Harley. He didn't blame him. "Yeah, but, it was weird. He was cool for literally an hour, but then he sees me takin' orders from one of the Bulls, he recognized their tat-"

"Duh." Jo put his a fist in his jacket pocket and took a long drag off his cigarette. "Fucking horns, man? There ain't a single fuckin' Chicago fan in this city."

"Got that shit right," Zack sniggered into his hand, then waved it off. "No, but he sees it, and he asks why I take their business. I tell him we always do, we always have, and that's when he just turned off. He must just not like toughs, or maybe he's just picky." Zack turned around, and lowered his voice to a grumble. "I'd fire the antisocial creep in a second, but he works too hard for that. He's twice the tech Dougie ever was. Does my work too, and better than I do. I do all the fun stuff, and he does all the hard stuff. He's actually learned stuff from a school, he didn't just learn code teaching himself to hack. But... that creepy smile." Zack tugged at his own cheeks. "I mean, you first think, he looks so nice, but there ain't nothing nice about that face. That smile means he don't like you- and seriously, what's not to like about me?!" Zack sniffed. "But whatever. I'm too awesome for that two-faced bullshit." He cast a hairy eyeball at Jo. "He liked you, at least I thought he did. He doesn't smile the way he smiled at you. What the fuck did you do?"

"I have no fucking clue." Jo extinguished his cigarette onto Zack's mousepad and tossed the butt into the bin behind the desk. Zack swore and quickly stomped into the bin.

"Idiot, there's paper in here! You'll burn the place down!"

"Whatever. Look, drama queen, I'm gonna see if Ken needs me to do anything else, I'll be back 'round closin' time." Jo ignored the middle finger Zack flipped at him as he stepped outside and lit up a fresh cigarette. "My rush charge is still good even if your tech hates my guts." He kicked the kickstand on his bike loose and hopped on before Zack could come up with any comeback at all, though he was sure he heard the words 'fucking idiot' out of the corner of his hearing.

Yeah, maybe he was. He had clued in on Harley- from the first, he'd figured Harley hated criminals, right down to himself, but had gotten over Jo being one for whatever reason. But- and while this was a guess, Jo figured it was a pretty good guess- Harley hated the gangs even more. And that was fine, he was entitled to hate whoever he wanted. It was none of Jo's business.

He didn't know why he still cared that he'd been shut out like that. It's not like it hadn't happened before. He should have been used to it. Maybe he wasn't as used to it as he thought.

* * *

As it turned out, Ken had another job for him when he called to check in- hand delivery to the circuit court from a law firm, which were stressful but welcome, since lawyers never balked at the price and the loads were light, but you had to get there quick and get back quicker. Lawyers were a finicky sort, too used to books and not used enough to people, and Jo hated dealing with them since they talked fast and smart and usually down at him, but their money was green. It was like the rest of his job- just something he dealt with.

Except today, it wasn't just a comfortable mediocre. Jo's body was at his work, but his mind was still in the whitewashed office on the North side and trying to puzzle out what had happened that day. The more he thought about it, the more he went from confused to angry. What the hell had he actually done to the guy? Harley could hate the gangs all he wanted, but he'd never done anything to the guy personally. He knew he had hurt people, but not Harley. Harley had no right to treat him like that- he sure as hell wasn't going to stand in Zack's defense, because Zack was kind of a prick anyway- but him? Jo wasn't a doormat either, and he wasn't the dirt on his shoe. It was hard to keep from sneering at the legal secretary who accepted the envelope from him, and he smoked all the way back to the North side with a succession of cigarettes cycling past his lips and into his lungs.

Fuck it, he wasn't dealing with that shit. He wasn't going to let it bother him, but he sure as hell wasn't going to just let it sit. He was going to ask Harley straight up, get a straight answer, and move on with his goddamn life. He hauled back up across streets stained orange with the setting sun, past kids playing chicken with cars on Central Avenue or pickup basketball at the rec center, thinking only of what it'd feel like to lift that moody little nerd by his lapels and shake him until he picked a smile or a scowl and stuck with it.

Zack was turning off the light on the "Open" sign when Jo reached the door and grabbed the handle. Zack shrugged broadly. "I'm sorry, man, you'll have to come back tomorrow." Jo scowled at him, and he put his hands in front of him. "Harl said your computer was almost ready. He'll be done first thing in the morning."

"Fine. Whatever." Jo knew scowling this much would give him wrinkles, but he didn't care as he propped his bike up on the wall and lit a fresh cigarette. He didn't even care that Ken might chew his ass for not bringing the computer back, he was more interested in the geek working on it now. If the shop was closing up, Harley would be coming out, and Harley had no right to tell him to "leave" or "get out" of a goddamn public roadway. He had nothing better to do. He was going to wait.

So he did, gradually smoking cigarette after cigarette to the filter and tossing the butts into the street. He thumbed out a text to Ken updating him on the computer and signing out for the night, and ignored the chime of the reply. He instead listened to the hum of noise from inside, tapping on a calculator, then the soft rumble of Harley's voice, and Zack's response: "What? No way. You gotta go home, the boss says she ain't payin' overtime, there's no way she'll pay you for the overnight... No, I ain't gonna let you stay without gettin' paid! Jesus! Go home, you'll drive yourself nuts if you never stop working!"

Of course that was the kind of guy Harley was. Jo almost wanted to spit on the guy, except he'd been cool for a little while and really, he should have felt bad. But hey, the idiot would be out here any second... Zack emerged from the front door and locked it behind him, already yammering on the phone with what Jo guessed was a girl, wearing a big stupid grin.

"Hellllllo baby, Daddy's on his way! Why'n'ch you get your cute self an' all your cutie friends..." He passed Jo by without even a passing glance, and Jo blew a smoke ring in his wake. He distantly wondered how much Zack was paying whoever was on the other end of the line to put up with that kind of talk. Strange, though, that he locked the front door with Harley still inside. Didn't matter. He was going to come out sometime.

It was right about when Jo had that thought that he heard a loud crash from around the corner, and he didn't pay it any mind as first- probably just a stray cat knocking over a garbage can. When he heard another crash, he cursed animal control. When the noises became a little more steady, Jo pushed himself around the wall and leaned around the corner, and saw creeps in dark clothes all darting into the alleyway between the computer shop and the adjacent vacant house, and he could hear them as he approached:

"Get down here!" Jo felt that sting of fight-or-flight instinct, and he'd never been one to listen to the "flight" side of the argument. He put his smoke out and entered the alley, and saw what the crashing was- a crowd of men around his age, surrounding the back exit of the shop and the iron fire escape that hung loosely off the building. Some were shaking it, pounding it against the building, and Harley had pinned himself against the door, with that big covered dome hugged to his chest in one arm and the other hand flailing uselessly at the door handle- it wouldn't open, though, Jo had figured out the automatic deadbolt the hard way himself once. One of the thugs pushed past the others to start up the narrow stairway.

"Trapped like a fucking rat," he sneered as he closed in on Harley, and Harley, wide-eyed, kept pawing at the door. No good, and the thug seized Harley by his shirt and tossed him down the stairs. "Take your medicine!"

Harley cried out, still hugging the dome to him even as the guys surrounded and descended on him, and Jo wondered for a second why he was still standing there when he spotted a tattoo of a penny with legs on the back of one of their necks.

Cents.

And Jo was no longer standing there, he was diving into the fray. He was- still was- whipcord strong and bullwhip quick, months of hauling crates and riding his bike for hours a day making him stronger than he'd ever been as a teenager. These guys were armed only with fists and feet, and Jo tore through them like paper, especially with the element of surprise. He threw them into walls and stomped on feet and punched jaws until he was at the few crowding Harley. Harley was curled in the fetal position, still holding that damned thing as if to protect himself with it- or worse, to protect the thing itself over his own body- and Jo stumbled over him as he pushed the last three towards the wall.

"You gonna pick on a defenseless computer geek, or you think you can pull that shit on a fuckin' man?" Jo put himself between the thugs and Harley, cracking his knuckles and loosening the muscles in his neck with a few tips of his chin. His eyes roved them as the three traded quick looks to one another, not so stupid as to trade words out loud but not smart enough to figure Jo could read their actions. All three rushed him at once, and Jo first shoved the center attacker into the left and kicked the right into the wall, good enough to stun him. As the center recovered, Jo ducked to put a fist into his groin, and he rolled under to the left and caught him by the leg and twisted it back behind him. He felt a satisfying pop somewhere higher in the joint, and released him to deal with the guy who'd started on the right, who was recovering now. He was trembling, not strong enough to get up, not smart enough to roll away when Jo put his fist in his collar. Another Cent tattoo decorated his collarbone, and Jo pressed him into the brick. "So, what the hell did Harley ever do to you?"

Harley moaned softly from the ground, and Jo pinned the guy to the wall and turned to face him. "Conscious yet?" He shoved the guy to the wall again, making sure his head cracked against the brick, and dropped him. Most of the guys he'd dealt with had recovered enough to get up and run, and drag the worse-off with them, and the few who were left were working on the same. Harley didn't move, but opened his eyes.

"You said my name. Why... ah, how could you know?" He laughed weakly, in the saddest, emptiest way Jo could imagine, and shut his eyes again. He tried to put his right leg under him, but as soon as he tried to move the hip joint, he moaned and dropped flat. "Oh... oh dear..." Jo heard the guy behind him getting up and didn't even pay attention when he picked up his buddy and hauled him off. He instead got down beside Harley to see what had been done.

"Shit, where the hell're your glasses?" Jo patted the ground around him, not wanting to take his eyes off the guy. He was still trying to stand, but his right leg wasn't cooperating. Jo could see cuts and bruises on his face and on his chest where his buttons had been ripped off, nothing deep, but not all damage was visible. Couldn't see what had happened to his leg, anyway. He found plastic under his fingers, and quickly cleaned the lenses off on the bottom of his shirt. "Hey, here they are, and it's not like they could've gotten any worse, right?" He put them back onto Harley's face. Okay, small problem solved. Now the big problem. "So, look, I get that you don't like me, but I'm gonna get you to the ER-"

"Please, n-no." Harley pushed the dome towards the ground, carefully setting it upright. "S-sorry, Haku-"

"Haku?" Jo looked, and lifted the cover. It was a birdcage, and Jo could see a very obviously frightened white dove fluttering against the roof of the cage as if it were trying to get to Harley, shedding feathers like confetti on a parade. Jo's field of vision snapped back to Harley. "You were protecting your fucking pet?! Fucking Christ- come on, we're going to the fucking-"

"Don't take me to a hospital, I'm not that bad off." Harley shook his head. "If... if you could just get me to K-One, I'd be grateful." Jo frowned- the homeless shelter mission? Why would he- "Do you know where-"

"I've been." Jo didn't want to waste time arguing, and he wrapped one arm around Harley to lift him up onto his shoulder, then lifted the cage by some of the wires. "I'll get you there, man. It's gonna be okay." He realized that the last few thugs were gone, and an envelope had been shoved in through the bars of the cage. Jo frowned to himself- this was no random attack. He hadn't thought so, but that sealed the deal. "It's gonna be okay," he repeated without knowing what "it" was, and started to carry Harley and his bird out into the street.

He couldn't be mad at the guy anymore. He just wanted to ask what the hell sort of business he had with the Cents. Maybe that was what Harley was hiding under that mask, and with that in mind, Jo didn't care which side of the mask was facing him.

* * *

**End Notes:** The music on Harley's radio is "Gracious" by Ben Howard. Also, there is a full-length "Masque of the Red Death" movie, based on the Poe short story. Vincent Price stars. It has been expanded with subplots about the Emperor being a Satanist and trying to seduce a woman he kidnapped, and the dwarf jester trying to get him and his dwarf girlfriend (played by a little girl being dubbed over by an adult woman) out of the castle while getting his revenge on a man dressed in an ape costume, and... it's exactly as bad as you think it is (in my opinion.) I actually found out about it because some of the dialogue was sampled for a Theatre of Tragedy song. Next chapter will be up (hopefully) soon!


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